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  • Why wood from B.C. forests is burning to fuel U.K. energy needs


    The Fifth Estate

     


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    Good stuff. BBC and CBC are missing some key points. I would like to illuminate how the practice of clearcutting muddies the waters, without being recognised.

    Because we do not practice proper forestry, which retains the canopy, and only removes single selected trees, we cut everything to the ground. This produces slash piles, and kills every single tree, including ones "too small", or of a species that the province is too lazy to market.

    Then Drax can turn around and say: "We did chip a few whole trees that were "unwanted" or "a fire hazard". Those trees were wanted. We wanted them to live and provide ecosystem services like:

    1. Water retention
    2. Topsoil creation
    3. Carbon capture
    4. Biodiversity preservation

    Those lost ecosystem services from 200,000 hectares a year of clearcutting no longer protect us from extreme fires and floods.

    Also, burning any fuel for electricity is species suicide. Lots of false narrative to challenge.

    This is what good forestry looks like. This Menominee forest has yielded billions of board feet of timber since 1890. Still providing all the original ecosystem services:

     

     

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    A totally damning piece on the BC government and real exposure of their total mismanagement of BC’s forests. Premier John Horgan wouldn’t give the Fifth Estate an interview.  Neither would former Chief Forester Diane Nicholls, who always supported the wood pellet industry, and now has gone to work for Drax in a senior position.

    All damning. Hats off to Michelle Connelly, the star of the show, and to Ben Parfitt and Bob Simpson for helping to expose the truth about Drax, the big UK company, that is now logging our forests, our standing trees, for pellets!  Though they claim otherwise!

    Now our public forests lie in ruins because of this supreme mismanagement and with provincial government subsidies to Drax and the pellet industry! Appalling.

    The BC government for far too long has been controlled by big industry which has led to this forest and climate disaster.

    Time to stop these ravaging companies in our forests. This is a must watch Fifth Estate piece.  Excellent.

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    Great job Michelle, Ben, Bob and all who supported this exposure of Drax and a complicit BC government! 

    Forest professionals, who sanction this forest destruction are no where to be seen or heard in this debate.

    The BC government looks more and more foolish, and apparently ignorant of important forest ecology relationships and climate change variables.  I am so tired of hearing "waste" applied to dead trees.  Where do foresters and bureaucrats think forests come from?  water is stored and filtered?  nutrients are stored?  plants and animals have habitat?

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    "The trees don't belong to us, they belong to the Earth". That comment from one of the young British activists sticks with me. It's the truth that many need to be reminded about as we flounder in this "extractive" mindset that seems "normal". But as Bruce Cockburn reminds us, the trouble with normal is it always get worse.

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